GA Releases Graduate Student Happiness & Well-Being Report

Graduate Student Happiness & Well-Being Report

With this report, the Graduate Assembly calls upon the University community to make happiness and well-being a top priority for graduate education at Berkeley. Far from diverting attention from academic and research priorities, well-being is a critical enabling condition for academic success. The science is clear: balanced, happy people are more productive, more creative, more collaborative, better at long-term goal pursuit, more likely to find employment and more physically and psychologically resilient. Well-being is not just about helping people in crisis, as important as it is to do so. Well-being is about enabling all graduate students to do their best work and make the most of their time here at Berkeley.

The Graduate Student Happiness & Well-Being Report discusses the top factors that support and predict the well-being of graduate students, based on a large survey of all schools and colleges with academic and professional degree goals. It is the first report on Berkeley graduate student well-being in 10 years. Your feedback is invited. Please use this form to share your thoughts, or if your message is time-sensitive, please send us an email at galen@ischool.berkeley.edu orgssp@ga.berkeley.edu.

Therapy can be a great resource when you need a little extra help. Counseling & Psychological Services has a number of satellite offices for graduate students so you don’t have to run into the undergraduates you may teach, and the first five sessions are free. Learn more about counseling resources for graduate students.

More resources are available, and in some cases it is students themselves who have stepped in to fill the gap. Beyond Academia, Thriving in Science, and the overwhelmingly-approved Wellness Fee Referendum are all student-led efforts. Know of a helpful resource for graduate students? Let us know.

[…] by Georgeann Sack in We’re all in this together, followed by Galen Panger’s findings in the Graduate Student Happiness and Well-Being Report, for which Anna Lieb reminds us that We’re still in this together, and Alexandra del Carpio […]

[…] and postdocs face many pressures, and these can all take a toll on their mental health. A 2014 study by the Graduate Assembly at the University of California, Berkeley, for example, found that more […]

[…] face several pressures, and these can easily all take a toll on their mental health. A 2014 study by the Graduate Assembly at the University of California, Berkeley, for example, found that more […]

[…] working, you have little free time and you are struggling to pay your bills. There’s a study at Berkeley on the happiness and well-being of their graduate students, where they found 47% of Berkeley […]

[…] in the US, I am hardly alone in my struggle with mental illness. A Berkeley study indicates that female academics are particularly vulnerable to depression in graduate school, while UK and Australian studies indicate that university professors experience […]

About the GA

The Graduate Assembly is the official representative body of the graduate and professional students at the University of California, Berkeley. The fundamental principles of the Graduate Assembly are the promotion of a vibrant student social life, inclusiveness, activism, community service, educational improvement, and professional development. In service to these principles the Graduate Assembly advocates for students, funds student groups on campus, and directly manages a variety of projects.